The so-called “Pentacle
Memorandum” convinced UFO researcher Jacques Vallee that
the US government had been toying with the official UFO investigations,
and that these were a front for something else… if not something
more sinister.

Philip Coppens

In
Forbidden Science (1992), Jacques Vallee, who was the inspiration
for one of the main characters in Spielberg’s Close Encounters
of the Third Kind, reports how in 1967 he found Allen Hynek’s
UFO files to be in serious disarray. On Sunday, June 18, 1967,
Vallee tried to restore some order in the files and “found
a letter which is especially remarkable because of the new light
it throws on the key period of the Robertson Panel and of Report
#14”. This was the report that was also at the core of Leon
Davidson’s enquiries and which made him conclude that the
US government were using UFOs as part of a psychological warfare
exercise.

Jacques
Vallee

The report Vallee found was stamped, in red ink: “SECRET
– Security Information” and dated January 9, 1953.
Vallee has nicknamed the man who signed it “Pentacle”,
arguing it was not up to him to reveal his name. Since, others
have named Pentacle. What was never withheld was that the memo
was addressed to Miles E. Coll at Wright Patterson Air Force Base,
for transmittal to Captain Ruppelt, the government’s lead
investigator – as far as the public was concerned –
on UFOs.

Vallee
read how the opening paragraph established that prior to the top-level
1953 Robertson Panel, somebody had analysed thousands of UFO cases
on behalf of the US government. The document noted that the majority
of these case reports were found lacking in several aspects, and
that the panel should thus ideally be postponed. Failing such
postponement, a list had to be created about what the five specialists
that would serve on the panel could and should not discuss. To
quote Vallee: “the representatives of this top-level research
group were against convening the Robertson Panel!” But in
the end, they could not stop the formation of the panel, which
was chaired by HP Robertson, physicist from California Institute
of Technology and would go down into history as “the Robertson
Panel”. The other four members were Luis Alvarez, Nobel
prize in physics; Lloyd Berkner, space scientist; Sam Goudsmit,
nuclear physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Thornton
Page, astronomer.

When
Vallee read the memorandum, he noticed that there were references
to a Project Stork, which Vallee had not come across before. The
project seemed to be a key determinant in what the panel could
discuss – and what not, i.e. what would be kept away from
the panel. By preselecting the evidence, the conclusion the scientists
would reach could thus be known in advance. It is a well-established
practice that is employed in all government enquiries, but which
continues to bedazzle the public, who realise the commission’s
conclusions are never in line with the truth. This is largely
not the fact of the commission, but of the evidence the commission
is presented with. If you do not get to see a smoking gun, you
can you comment on it?
Of more interest was that the project Stork team had identified
pockets of high UFO activity and recommended that these should
be specifically studied. But they also added that many different
types of aerial activity should be secretly and purposefully scheduled
within the area. To quote Vallee: “what these people were
recommending was nothing less than a carefully calibrated and
monitored simulation of an entire UFO wave.”

Allen
Hynek

Upon
reading this memo, Vallee drew the conclusion that the scientists
on the panel – and the UFO community as a whole, if not
the public as a whole – had been led down a path that had
been carefully constructed by people behind the scenes. He wondered
what kind of game was truly being played and whether this was
just one bad apple or just the tip of the iceberg.
Though just one document, it was a hot potato. Vallee recalled
how “Hynek once assured me that if it ever turned out that
a secret study had been conducted, the American public would raise
an unbelievable stink against the military and Intelligence community.
It would be an outrage, he said, an insult to the whole country,
not to mention a violation of the most cherished American principles
of democracy. There would be an uproar in Congress, editorials
in major scientific magazines, immediate demands for sanctions.”
The memo clearly showed that a secret study had been conducted…
so how would Hynek and the public react?

Before
showing it to Hynek, Vallee shared the memo with a colleague,
Fred Beckman, who agreed that the document clearly showed that
and in what manner the Robertson Panel had been manipulated. Vallee
considered this indeed to be the greatest implication of the memo:
the document proved that the Robertson panel had been manipulated,
which “amounted to a scandal of major proportion in the
eyes of any scientist. […] Here is a special meeting of
the five most eminent scientists in the land, assembled by the
government to discuss a matter of national security. Not only
are they not made aware of all the data, but another group has
already decided ‘what can and cannot be discussed (Pentacle's
own words!)’ when they meet.”
Should Vallee show it to Hynek? He drew the conclusion that Hynek
had been “too much timid. In many cases he even believed
in the explanations he was producing.” Vallee decided instead
to sound Hynek out first. On Monday July 10, 1967, Hynek and Vallee
were discussing a new contract that Hynek was supposed to sign;
it would continue his relationship as one of the main consultants
on the government’s UFO programme. What was remarkable was
that the contract was not with the Air Force, but with Dodge Corporation,
a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill, a textbook publisher. Vallee noted
that the contract had Hynek report into a certain “Sweeney”
and that the advice was on whether UFOs represented a danger for
the security of the US – which in itself is not a scientific
question, which was apparently what Hynek was hired to answer.
Vallee specifically noted that the project Hynek was working for
was not called Blue Book – the official Air Force title
of the project – but Golden Eagle. Vallee asked whether
that name had always been used, and if not, under what name the
project was known before. Hynek dropped the bomb when he replied
its predecessor was called White Stork. (Note both a bird names
and in later years, there would be talk of an entire “Aviary”
as being the secret handlers of the UFO community in the 1980s.)
He then confirmed that in 1953, he worked for the Battelle Memorial
Institute, which had been responsible for Stork. This meant –
and confirmed – that Pentacle worked for Battelle too. Vallee
then asked whether Hynek knew a Miles E. Coll, to whom the memo
was addressed. Hynek did not. He did name Pentacle and seven others
whose initials appeared in the secret memo. Hynek confirmed that
“they were all administrators or staffers with Project Stork,
including the man who sent me on a clandestine survey of astronomers
in 1952, to find out discreetly what my colleagues thought of
UFOs. ‘Pentacle’ himself was a leader of Stork.”
When Vallee enquired how Stork related to the Robertson Panel,
Hynek replied “practically nil. Battelle wanted to remain
outside all that.” However, that was clearly not the case
– and Vallee knew it. Furthermore, it was known that it
was Battelle that had written Report #14, a report that was directly
linked with the panel. Hynek was either not sufficiently informed
or downplayed the role of Battelle. Vallee realised Hynek was
not lying; he might just not want to face the overall implication.

Throughout
the summer, Vallee battled with the question whether or not he
should show Hynek the Pentacle memorandum. In August, Vallee asked
Hynek to make some enquiries. Could Hynek have a copy of the Battelle’s
card catalogue from Report #14? Hynek “was coldly told that
they were no longer in existence. Sweeney pretended to be outraged:
‘It’s a crime, it’s unthinkable…’
But Pentacle is still with Battelle, and he has told Quintanila
that the cards had actually been thrown away” is what Vallee
wrote in his diary.
On September 8, Vallee decided to give, as a parting gift to Hynek,
a framed reproduction of The Lady and the Unicorn. He decided
to insert, between the picture and the cardboard of the frame,
the Pentacle letter. Once Vallee was back in France, he told Hynek
where he could find the memo. In October, Vallee received a letter
from Hynek, who wrote that he had gone to Columbus to see Pentacle
and his team at Battelle. Rather than a confrontation, he merely
told them about the letter and got – unsurprisingly –
rebuffed. “I quoted enough from memory to get them very
worried. They insisted on the fact that their cards had been destroyed
and there was no listing, and all that had taken place with the
approval of ATIC.”
But Hynek was upset – worried. In March 1968, Hynek reported
that he once again went to see Pentacle, but rather than a one
to one meeting, Pentacle had four colleagues with him. When Hynek
started reading from his notes, Pentacle snatched the paper out
of his hand and said it was an old story and did not return his
notes. Vallee: “Why should Pentacle worry so much about
a simple letter written fifteen years ago?”
By 1969, it became clear that Hynek would not confront Pentacle,
but the people knew that Hynek knew it was a sham, and that he
was unhappy about being played – he was, of course, not
the only one, but one of those who knew. At the same time, Hynek
wrestled with the question whether or not he should go public
with the story – which would test his theory that if he
did, it would lead to moral outrage with the general public and
its elected representatives.
Hynek did eventually talk, though what he said was not what he
had found out. Instead, he rather sheepishly argued that a new
study should be done. At that moment, the Air Force pushed him
aside. Vallee: “First they defused the issue by getting
their most vocal opponents to testify before bogus Congressional
Hearings; then they selected Ed Condon, a physicist who was about
to retire, and he signed his name to a report which was a travesty
of science, yet reassured the establishment. They used that report
to bring about the liquidation of Hynek’s position, but
they were careful not to fire him.” That could, of course,
have just been the event that would make Hynek go public.

Though
the memo never received the impact Vallee thought it would have
from a public point of view , the memo did have an important effect
on both Hynek and Vallee; both realised that they had been pawns
in a game which they never were able to control, if only because
both were too timid to shout “conspiracy” from the
rooftops. As late as the 1990s, Vallee still shied away by withholding
Pentacle’s name. Vallee concluded that “the discovery
of the Pentacle document had a major impact on me. It gave me
an uncomfortable insight into the practices of government agencies
and the high-powered consultants who serve them. […] It
was the main raison for my return to Europe in 1967. It made obvious
some unsavoury aspects of scientific policy at the highest level.
It provided quite an education for an idealistic young astronomer.”
In short, it shattered his innocence.

Shortly
after the publication of Vallee’s book in 1992, a document
which purported to be the Pentacle Memo came into limited circulation
among certain researchers. Dale Goudie confronted Vallee with
the alleged Pentacle memo. On June 12, 1993, Vallee agreed that
“the document you sent me appears to be genuine. It
corresponds to the one I saw.” The document does indeed
contain confirmation that Battelle Memorial Institute was working
on UFO project(s) at the time of the Robertson Panel (January
1953), and apparently could exercise some amount of control over
the handling of the subject matter.
The document was of interest to the entire UFO problem too. UFO
researcher Barry Greenwood pointed out that this was a top secret
document. It showed that the government treated UFOs as a cover…
but that the report also suggested – because of no references
to it – that no extra-terrestrial craft had landed, or crashed.
Vallee agreed that “the significance of the memo comes,
in part, from what it does not say. In particular, it makes no
reference to any recovered UFO hardware, at Roswell or elsewhere,
or to alien bodies.”
To anyone who still failed to see the importance of the 1955 memorandrum,
Vallee added that “the Pentacle proposal goes far beyond
anything mentioned before. It daringly states that ‘many
different types of aerial activity should be secretly and purposefully
scheduled within the area’. It is difficult to be more clear.
We are not talking simply about setting up observing stations
and cameras. We are talking about large-scale, covert simulation
of UFO waves under military control.”

Vallee
knew, however, that this gigantic revelation – that the
US government had made a policy, which it most likely then executed
– that UFO waves were fabricated, would go over both UFO
researchers and the public head. It is like finding out that Santa
Claus does not exist. He lamented that “I find it odd that
a [UFO] group […] should fail to see the significance of
the Pentacle Memo, which is an authentic document, when so much
time, money and ink have been devoted over the last several years
to an in-depth analysis of the MJ-12 papers, which were faked.
Perhaps the Pentacle memo only proves that scientific studies
of UFOs (and even their classified components) have been manipulated
since the fifties. But it also suggests several avenues of research
which are vital to the future of this field: why were Pentacle's
proposals kept from the panel? Were his plans for a secret simulation
of UFO waves implemented? If so, when, where and how? What was
discovered as a result? Are these simulations still going on?”
They are big questions… which the UFO researchers do not
want to hear… and which no-one can answer…

This letter concerns
a preliminary recommendation to ATIC on future methods of
handling the problem of unidentified aerial objects. This
recommendation is based on our experience to date in analyzing
several thousands of reports on this subject. We regard
the recommendation as preliminary because our analysis is
not yet complete, and we are not able to document it where
we feel it should be supported by facts from the analysis.

We are making
this recommendation prematurely because of a CIA-sponsored
meeting of a scientific panel, meeting in Washington, D.C.,
January 14, 15, and 16, 1953, to consider the problem of
"flying saucers". The CIA-sponsored meeting is
being held subsequent to a meeting of CIA, ATIC, and our
representatives held at ATIC on December 12, 1952. At the
December 12 meeting our representatives strongly recommended
that a scientific panel not be set up until the results
of our analysis of the sighting-reports collected by ATIC
were available. Since a meeting of the panel is now definitely
scheduled we feel that agreement between Project Stork and
ATIC should be reached as to what can and what cannot be
discussed at the meeting in Washington on January 14-16
concerning our preliminary recommendation to ATIC.

Experience to
date on our study of unidentified flying objects shows that
there is a distinct lack of reliable data with which to
work. Even the best-documented reports are frequently lacking
in critical information that makes it impossible to arrive
at a possible identification, i.e. even in a well-documented
report there is always an element of doubt about the data,
either because the observer had no means of getting the
required data, or was not prepared to utilize the means
at his disposal. Therefore, we recommend that a controlled
experiment be set up by which reliable physical data can
be obtained. A tentative preliminary plan by which the experiment
could be designed and carried out is discussed in the following
paragraphs.

Based on our experience
so far, it is expected that certain conclusions will be
reached as a result of our analysis which will make obvious
the need for an effort to obtain reliable data from competent
observers using the [... unreadable...] necessary equipment.
Until more reliable data are available, no positive answers
to the problem will be possible.

Mr. Miles E.
Coll -2- January 9, 1953

We expect that
our analysis will show that certain areas in the United
States have had an abnormally high number of reported incidents
of unidentified flying objects. Assuming that, from our
analysis, several definite areas productive of reports can
be selected, we recommend that one or two of theses areas
be set up as experimental areas. This area, or areas, should
have observation posts with complete visual skywatch, with
radar and photographic coverage, plus all other instruments
necessary or helpful in obtaining positive and reliable
data on everything in the air over the area. A very complete
record of the weather should also be kept during the time
of the experiment. Coverage should be so complete that any
object in the air could be tracked, and information as to
its altitude, velocity, size, shape, color, time of day,
etc. could be recorded. All balloon releases or known balloon
paths, aircraft flights, and flights of rockets in the test
area should be known to those in charge of the experiment.
Many different types of aerial activity should be secretly
and purposefully scheduled within the area.

We recognize that
this proposed experiment would amount to a large-scale military
maneuver, or operation, and that it would require extensive
preparation and fine coordination, plus maximum security.
Although it would be a major operation, and expensive, there
are many extra benefits to be derived besides the data on
unidentified aerial objects.

The question of
just what would be accomplished by the proposed experiment
occurs. Just how could the problem of these unidentified
objects be solved? From this test area, during the time
of the experiment, it can be assumed that there would be
a steady flow of reports from ordinary civilian observers,
in addition to those by military or other official observers.
It should be possible by such a controlled experiment to
prove the identity of all objects reported, or to determine
positively that there were objects present of unknown identity.
Any hoaxes under a set-up such as this could almost certainly
be exposed, perhaps not publicly, but at least to the military.

In addition, by
having resulting data from the controlled experiment, reports
for the last five years could be re-evaluated, in the light
of similar but positive information. This should make possible
reasonably certain conclusions concerning the importance
of the problem of "flying saucers".

Results of an
experiment such as described could assist the Air Force
to determine how much attention to pay to future situations
when, as in the past summer, there were thousands of sightings
reported. In the future, then, the Air Force should be able
to make positive statements, reassuring to the public, and
to the effect that everything is well under control.